If the US cannot afford expensive healthcare, why is there so much

[applegrove]

investment in cancer research? I would ask the GOP why cancer is socialized but the poor under the AHCA are not.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Cancer is expensive to treat.

People can make money off it.

[applegrove]

2. But they could make money off of it if the poor could get cancer care too.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. True, but that money would have to come from the government.

GOP ideologues don't want government money to be used for the benefit of the undeserving poor, who probably are poor because they bought refrigerators and iPhones.

[applegrove]

4. Right you are. But why then should cancer science and discoveries be subsidized for

the rich. That research is smothered in government money after all.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Because the rich deserve it, of course.

Socialism is fine for the rich.

[applegrove]

6. Try the question on a Trumpster. I've tried it on a few Trump supporters

at the Discussionist. All I got was crickets.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. I don't know any Trumpsters, but I suspect the answer

would be some kind of libertarian bullpucky about how people should take responsibility for their own health. Those poor people probably got cancer because they smoked, or lived near a toxic waste dump, so it's their fault anyhow.

[applegrove]

8. I don't know any either.

[guillaumeb]

10. iphones AND refrigerators?

I thought all poor people eat at McDonalds every day.

[Bettie]

20. When they're not driving their expensive cars

to the grocery store to purchase steak and lobster.

[HoneyBadger]

9. It turns out that you do not need money to vaccinate cancer, just smart people

Cuba looks to have the vaccine, and they are quite poor. They have only had it for 25 years and been handing it out free for 6. Sounds like Cuba care is great care.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7267518


CimaVax, which is both a treatment and vaccine for lung cancer, has been researched in Cuba for 25 years and free to the Cuban public since 2011...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. CimaVax only treats small-cell lung cancer, but that's something.

They just started clinical trials in the US last year. If it passes the trials and is approved for use, you can bet it will be expensive here.

[HoneyBadger]

14. That is why we need to be able to order the original from Cuba for cheap

Not make Big Cancer rich

[mwooldri]

11. But the US can afford it. Problem is the US doesn't.

The GOP don't care.

The UK covers everyone through the NHS for £125 billion. That's about $190 billion in pre-brexit dollars. The Medicare budget was about $600 billion, the Medicaid budget about the same. 1.2 trillion dollars to cover 130 million people. Or $9,200 per person on Medicare or Medicaid. The UK government spends about $3,200 per person on the NHS.

Socialized medicine works.

[applegrove]

12. Yes I know. I am in canada. I was really asking the question to the GOP

out there in the ether.

[AngryAmish]

15. Everyone gets cancer, including rich people.

Politics drives research.

There is currently a huge uptick to mouth and neck cancers as well as rectal cancers. I blame HPV off the top of my head but I am no doctor.

Young and the relatively young get it. There will be a huge uptick in publicity and funding for these cancers in the next five years. There will be indignant marches, accusations of hate against politicians, etc. Get old enough you see everything a few times.

[applegrove]

18. I would not want to see any cuts to cancer treatment or research. I worked

as a secretary in a Cancer Centre. They were expanding the center's space by 80 percent to be ready for the uptick. But that was canada where the poor get the same treatment as the rich.

[AngryAmish]

21. Cancer treatment is getting better.

I got a polyp removed a year or so ago. Doc says as long as I get fourteen feet of hose up my asshole every five years I will not get colon cancer. So I got that going for me.

[applegrove]

22. Oh yes. People are surviving at great rates. My point was only that cancer research benefits the ric

so it is socialism for those that can afford insurance but not for the poor who can't.

[fescuerescue]

16. The poor gets cancer too.

I would like to see the exact figures, but their is alot of corporate/non-government money invested in cancer research, as well as plenty of government money.

Not to mention that there is much money to be made in cancer treatment.

I get your point, but I'm rather glad that public and private money goes into cancer research.

[applegrove]

17. Yes. I want to see research. I was just challenging GOPERS.

[MineralMan]

19. As long as some can afford it, there's money to be made.

The reality is that many, many Americans do have health insurance, mostly as part of their employment. so medical research is always ongoing, looking for new treatments (always expensive) for the diseases that plague humans. But, they don't need everyone to buy their new drugs or treatments. They don't care about that. As long as some will pay, they will keep creating new and expensive treatment products.

Here's the reality. If you have insurance that will pay for those new treatments, you're in luck. If you don't, you get to die from older, less effective treatments.

Some of the new cancer treatments that use immunotherapy are hugely expensive. If you have the type of cancer they can treat, you need a very good insurance policy that will cover those therapies, or you get to die without them.

Just because there is a new, effective treatment doesn't mean you can have access to it, as so many have learned. If you can't pay, nothing is preventing you from dying.

A lot of people die because they can't get new or costly effective treatment. It doesn't even get mentioned unless they have insurance that will cover it. "Sorry, Mr. Smith. We've done all we can. You have, maybe, six months to live." That's what you get if your insurance doesn't cover the latest, greatest treatment.

[applegrove]

23. I did not know that. But the research is still partly socialized on those

newer treatments is it not?

[metalbot]

24. Something of a false equivalence

The US spends about $5B on cancer research per year, so about $15 per person. I'd fully expect that to get cut over the next four years, because of "SPENDING BAD" spasms in Congress.

That level of funding isn't even a drop in the bucket for the number of poor people who need healthcare in the US (in fact it would pay the average health costs for only about half a million people).

You could just as well ask why NASA should be socialized but healthcare is not (but then you'd get to the fact that we only spend $60 per person on NASA, which is nothing compared to health care costs as well).

[applegrove]

25. Thanks.

[HoneyBadger]

26. Eliminate tobacco, and you eliminate a lot of cancer

Which is not happening.

Americans do not really want to eliminate cancer.

So what makes anyone think that Americans want to cure it.

Cancer deaths related to tobacco usage should be reclassified as suicide.